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Major naval shipyard cuts jobs as work dries up

SCOTT BEVAN: One of the country's major naval shipyards has slashed 30 jobs and has warned the Federal Government that more will follow unless it gets more defence contracts.

On Thursday BAE Systems told its staff of more than 1,000 at the Williamstown shipyard in Victoria that 30 welding and boilermaking jobs would need to be cut due to a lack of upcoming work.

The Australian Manufacturing and Workers Union said the redundancies were a sign that a drop-off in Department of Defence shipbuilding work was starting to bite.

Kesha West reports.

KESHA WEST: The industry has been calling it the "valley of death": the looming gap in ship building, when the current contracts run out in 2015 and the work dries up.

But some of the contracts have already been completed and the jobs, as predicted, are starting to go.

On Thursday BAE Systems in Williamstown, one of the country's major naval shipyards, announced 30 redundancies, warning more will follow.

A spokeswoman from BAE Systems told The World Today there's likely to be further job losses in the near future if they don't get more work from the Government.

Steve Dargavel is the Victorian secretary of the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union (AMWU). He says the job losses were both anticipated and preventable.

STEVE DARGAVEL: The company and the union put forward a plan for the Commonwealth to schedule work properly to avoid the redundancies.

KESHA WEST: Do you envisage further job cuts?

STEVE DARGAVEL: There will be further job cuts at this site unless the Commonwealth moves quickly to ensure that work that they've got to have built anyway is plugged into the various production gaps that we have at places like Williamstown.

KESHA WEST: In an emailed statement BAE Systems said:

EXTRACT FROM A STATEMENT FROM BAE SYSTEMS: We are continuing to look at other measures to achieve savings across the business including minimising costs. In addition we will continue to talk to the Government about more work for the yard.

KESHA WEST: The Williamstown shipyard has just completed work on a landing helicopter dock and an air warfare destroyer and is urging the Government to bring forward contracts for other naval projects - including another Air Warfare destroyer and patrol boats.

The AMWU says the Federal Government needs to start investing defence dollars in Australia and Australian workers - not elsewhere.

STEVE DARGAVEL: Roughly half of our defence expenditure is being sent overseas and disappointing thousands of workers in other countries. What we've got to avoid is ignoring the problem, not scheduling the work properly, and then procuring offshore - sending tens of billions of taxpayer's dollars to other countries and throwing a whole lot of skilled workers on the scrapheap. That would be a disastrous outcome.

KESHA WEST: The Australian redundancies come as BAE Systems UK arm announces plans to cut some 1,775 jobs at three shipyards, ending the building of warships in England for the first time in hundreds of years - a move that could potentially force the UK to turn to France or Germany for ships. The ship building industry here says Australia is heading the same way.

The Department of Defence and the Minister for Industry were unavailable for comment.